For its fifth edition, Abu Dhabi Art — the emirate’s biggest art event of the year — has included a number of new elements in its programme. Street performances, poetry reading on the beach, and tailored bus tours between Saadiyat Island and Abu Dhabi city are some of the additions to the four-day fair from November 20 to November 23.
Performing arts
This year, Abu Dhabi Art has expanded its platform for performing arts with a new programme called “Durub Al Tawaya”, which creates a special route of enactments and cultural performances that connect the Saadiyat Cultural District with the city of Abu Dhabi. “Durub” means long paths taken by travellers across the desert, and “tawaya” means underground water springs in Emirati, or “Taway” refers to layers of meaning in classical Arabic and stands for ideas and values that are revealed as they unfold.
Created by Tarek Abu Al Fetouh, an independent curator and architect based in Brussels and inspired by Greek poet Constantine Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka”, the programme highlights the importance of the journey and the route.
“The final destination is not the most important, but the journey is ... the journey is the real experience,” Abu Al Fetouh said.
Running every 20 minutes throughout the fair, four city buses will connect four destinations of significance within the city — Manarat Al Saadiyat, Mina Zayed, Courniche Beach and Marina Mall — where a series of activities with a number of artists, poets and performers will be hosted at each stop.
“The buses are not made to transport audiences. The idea behind creating a new bus line was to connect these points where people can use it [the bus] throughout the day,” Abu Al Fetouh said, explaining that the buses become moving artworks that roam Abu Dhabi, connecting art spaces, historical locations and meeting points.
Artists from the UAE, Egypt and China have been commissioned to transform these four buses into moving art pieces using images, video, and sound effects. “The whole idea behind this is to connect what’s happening on Saadiyat Island with the city,” Abu Al Fetouh said.
About 50 galleries will be participating in this edition. Previously, galleries were exhibited under four sections — “Modern, Contemporary and Design”; “Beyond”, which is for large-scale installations and sculptures; “Bidaya”, which features an emerging gallery; and “Signature”, which features solo emerging artists.
This year, a new section titled “Artists’ Waves” has been added where selected artworks by innovative artists will be presented. “Artists’ Waves” also includes a special salon, where visitors engage with the artists, in a rotating programme.
This year, “Bidaya” will feature Dubai-based gallery Lawrie Shabibi, showcasing the works of Nabeel Nahas, Farghali Abdul Hafiz, Driss Ouadahi, Larissa Sansour, and for the first time, Korean artist Meekyoung Shin. Shin’s debut will feature vases from her “Ghost” series — a group of colourful renditions of Chinese vases made from soap and based on Chinese antiquities.
“This year, we have 91 per cent return rate for the galleries, but we also have three new galleries — Lawrie Shabibi from Dubai, Cheim & Reid from New York, and Carpenters Workshop, a design gallery from London,” Alanood Al Hammadi, exhibitor relations coordinator at the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, said. “We really have something for everyone.”
‘Art, Talks and Sensations’
This year’s edition of “Art, Talks & Sensations” returns under the artistic direction of Fabrice Bousteau with a programme of live performances, video screenings and poetry titled “Dunes and Waves”, which has more integration with the fair this year compared with previous years.
“Until last year, ‘Art, Talks and Sensations’ has always assumed the form of an art show or that of an artistic promenade or exhibition, mixing all creative disciplines, from philosophy to music and then on to contemporary art, happening parallel with the art fair — meaning next to the art fair, but never inside it. This has changed in this edition,” Bousteau said.
Running parallel with the programme under Bousteau’s direction are two exhibitions. “Artists’ Waves”, which falls under the “Art, Talks & Sensations” programme, will bring seven galleries from around the world, “from Jakarta to Dubai, via New York, Milan and Istanbul, to support star artists, such as Skyler Brickley and Peter Halley, Ziya Tacir, Wang Yuyang, Alessandro Cannistra, Gohar Dashti, Miler Lagos, Sa’ad Quraishi and Giovanni Ozzola,” he said.
An exhibition called “Small is Beautiful”, which features small-scale artworks from participating galleries in the “Modern, Contemporary and Design” section, is another new element of the “Art, Talks & Sensations” programme.
“I asked each gallery to propose an artwork of their choice, corresponding to different criteria — the principal criterion for the selection of the artworks being their small size. [I told them] I would, then, stage and curate the presentation of these artworks combined with the works from the new section, ‘Artists’ Waves’. The idea is to revise and renew the concept of the art fair that is based on conventional gallery stands and booths,” Bousteau explained.
“Small is Beautiful” will include a collection of 50 works by artists such as Samira Hodaei, Anna Dudchenko, Jacques Villeglé, Erwin Wurm, Chen Zhen, Mona Hatoum, Subodh Gupta, Richard Hudson and Yao Jui-Chung.
The programme brings together many international artistes, including pianist, composer and musical director Chassol, performing artiste Alexdrine Sciarroni, and award-winning dancers Sebastien Ramirez and Honji Wang.
According to Bousteau, these three different programmes bring the “Art, Talks and Sensations” spirit “which is, in my mind, exactly the essence of what Abu Dhabi is — a land of innovation, experiences and cultural mix”.
“Visitors will benefit from rich and multidisciplinary offerings that can satisfy all expectations — from the works of masters of the contemporary art scene; the works of young, emerging artists to be discovered or rediscovered differently; and the visual, sound and, even, tasting performances. Visitors from all origins, from the amateurs and art enthusiasts to the experienced collectors, may choose and create their proper course and experience,” Bousteau said.
Public programme
“We are expanding the performance programme this year which I think is really exciting and will be a key element of the fair,” said Tairone Bastien, public programmes manager at the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority.
This year, Abu Dhabi Art will be bringing a number of museum directors, curators, architects and artists, including French architect Jean Nouvel, who will return to the event to talk about the relationship between architecture and art.
Nouvel will sit on a panel discussion on this topic with Alain Seban, president of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac and conceptual artist Jenny Holzer.
The fair will also feature the second Guggenheim “Abu Dhabi Talking Art” series. “We’re looking at or meeting with several artists who are in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi collection. This is the second instalment of this series — the first one was in May. But for this series within Abu Dhabi Art artists from around the world will be talking about their shared histories and interests in pop culture, media, systems and conceptual work,” Bastien said.
Bastein expects more visitors this year. “Last year, we saw an exponential growth in terms of the audience size and the engagement by the community of Abu Dhabi itself, not just international visitors but the local visitors too. The buses will be running throughout the fair ... getting as many people as possible to at least engage or think about this fair and the artists that we’re working with,” he said.
A number of activities dedicated to children are also part of the programme, including guided tours throughout the exhibitions and an art-making workshop space. A guide contains details on what the event has in store for children and families.
Samia B. Mackieh is a writer based in Abu Dhabi.
People and places
When: November 20-23
Where: Manarat Al Saadiyat and UAE Pavilion.
Who you might spot there:
Jean Nouvel, world-famous architect and designer of Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Alain Seban, president of the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac, director of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.
Jenny Holzer, conceptual artist.
Reem Fadda, associate curator for Middle Eastern Art, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project.
Venetia Porter, curator, Islamic and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art, British Museum.
While talks and panels are open to the general public, prior registration is required. You can register through the website: www.abudhabiart.ae. Online and phone registration for talks and performances will close two hours before each event.
A virtual Alpine experience
By Jyoti Kalsi
The Julius Baer Lounge at ADA (Abu Dhabi Art), hosted by Julius Baer, leading Swiss private banking group and principal sponsor of ADA 2013, will present an interesting work by Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christophe van den Berg called “Hotel Vue des Alpes”.
The artwork, from the company’s art collection, is part of a series of internet-based projects created by the two artists in the mid-1990s, when digital art was at a nascent stage.
“Hotel Vue des Alpes” is a hotel that exists only in the virtual world (www.vuedesalpes.com). By going to the site and booking a room in the hotel, people can enjoy the virtual experience of visiting a beautiful Alpine resort in Switzerland. Visitors will get to see breathtaking landscapes of the snow-covered mountains as well as objects typically found in Swiss mountain resorts and linked with Swiss design, such as the red restaurant chairs and yellow tables found on most Alpine terraces, the famous “Davos” sledge, the Swiss Army blanket typically found in Alpine mountain cabins, and even the white ashtrays found in most Swiss restaurants.
To reach the hotel, visitors will walk across a lush green Alpine lawn, discovering beautiful flowers and other Alpine flora along the path.
The artists have also added other aspects of an Alpine experience, such as the danger from falling rocks that hikers can encounter in the mountains, 3-D printed sculptures of mushrooms, and prints of close-up views of lichens found on the mountain slopes.
“The concept behind this project, which began in 2000, was to establish a 3-D world on the internet using the clichéd imagery of Swiss Alpine tourism. Creating the fictitious spa hotel, with a working online room reservation service, was about asking questions concerning public and private space in the then upcoming digital medium. The idea was to provide a vast digital region on the net where the visitor can freely move along a series of images with the mouse, pleased like a virtual holiday guest with wandering around within the digital realms.
“The project later led to physical extensions in the form of large prints and spatial installations aimed at making a link between the digital consumer and the art connoisseur that still belonged to separate groups at that time. With ‘Vue des Alpes’ both groups would get an easy access point to help them understand digital media in contemporary art,“ van den Berg says.
Studer adds: “Having this work displayed at ADA is a great honour and a splendid opportunity to find out how our digital inventions will work in a part of the world we have not visited yet. We look forward to seeing the reactions to this exchange of cultures, which is not only about exporting ‘Swissness’ to Abu Dhabi, but also about sharing a piece of digital media art.”
Jyoti Kalsi is an arts enthusiast based in Dubai.
